Critical adsorption on curved objects

Abstract

A systematic fieldtheoretic description of critical adsorption on curved objects such as spherical or rodlike colloidal particles immersed in a fluid near criticality is presented. The temperature dependence of the corresponding order parameter profiles and of the excess adsorption are calculated explicitly. Critical adsorption on elongated rods is substantially more pronounced than on spherical particles. It turns out that, within the context of critical phenomena in confined geometries, critical adsorption on a microscopically thin `needle' represents a distinct universality class of its own. Under favorable conditions the results are relevant for the flocculation of colloidal particles.

52 pages, 10 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Casimir forces in binary liquid mixtures
• Wetting of Curved Surfaces

Cited by in corpus (19)

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• Hard-Sphere Fluids in Contact with Curved Substrates
• Critical behavior in the presence of an order-parameter pinning field
• Critical Casimir torques and forces acting on needles in two spatial dimensions
• Alignment of cylindrical colloids near chemically patterned substrates induced by critical Casimir torques
• Fluctuation Amplitude of a Trapped Rigid Sphere Immersed in a Near-Critical Binary Fluid Mixture within the Regime of the Gaussian Model
• Critical adsorption and Casimir torque in wedges and at ridges
• Critical adsorption on non-spherical colloidal particles
• Liquid bridging of cylindrical colloids in near-critical solvents
• Critical adsorption profiles around a sphere and a cylinder in a fluid at criticality: Local functional theory
• Modified critical correlations close to modulated and rough surfaces
• Scaling theory for the free-energy barrier to homogeneous nucleation of a non-critical phase near a critical point
• Correlation functions near Modulated and Rough Surfaces
• Effective interaction between a colloid and a soft interface near criticality
• Undulation Amplitude of a Fluid Membrane Surrounded by Near-Critical Binary Fluid Mixtures
• Adsorption transition of a self-avoiding polymer chain onto a rigid rod
• Critical Casimir forces between planar and crenellated surfaces
• Critical relaxation and the combined effects of spatial and temporal boundaries
• Drag Coefficient in Near-Critical Binary Mixtures: Solving Hydrodynamic Fields with Improved Numerics